An onion that had been waiting its turn on the balcony beside the kitchen
paused to catch its breath, went into labor, and pushed up a tender green shoot.
At the sacred birth of new life,
I placed the onion — carrying water and nutrients —
into a glass of water,
and I stroked it, whispering thanks.
Neighbors leave,
Mangwol Hill’s cherry blossoms fade,
and April slips away.
Those who needed to go have left,
and the restraint placed on those who must stay aches.
The onion dies to give birth to new life.
Watching leaders who live worse lives than an onion,
Time, they say, belongs to those who remain,
but I am ashamed of these inept officials.
Breathing the same air on a shared planet,
This May feels painfully, deeply shameful.
▶ With new spring onions in season, old onions naturally get pushed to the corners of the balcony. While tidying the balcony, I noticed a green shoot sprouting from one of the old onions. The onion was dissolving itself to push up another life. It destroys its past to build the future. Life continues quietly like that, unseen by anyone.
When the cherry blossoms fall and April withdraws, we always pause. In this season, those who have left stand out more vividly. Time slips away too easily; names that will never return become sharper. What had to go has gone, and those who remain carry heavy hearts. The sense of restraint we feel as the left-behind is likely an irredeemable debt to the departed.
The onion gives up its body to bring forth new life. What are we leaving behind? I ask whether we have merely thickened our skins while having nothing to offer. Standing before an onion that completes life through self-annihilation, I feel ashamed this May that people—worse than the onion—hold and wield power while we share the same breath.
/Park Mi-san, poet and Ph.D.
